Yeah this is one of the main reasons why Stackoverflow's question closing policies are bullshit. We're going to close the question so nobody can answer it... but they can still upvote it and it will still be ranked highly on Google!
Bunch of idiots.
You know the SO Devs actually tried to improve this a while ago - I think you would be able to reopen your question once or something. Of course the power-hungry mods hated that idea and the abandoned it.
At this point it's unfixable. They depend on their unpaid mods and they've already attracted the sort of people you absolutely don't want to moderate a site.
The only hack I've found is that if your question gets downvoted/closed you are allowed to delete it, wait half an hour and ask it again. Much better odds of success than editing the question.
You can't. The kinds of people who are nominated are the wrong kinds of people. I've participated in many SO elections and none of the candidates ever mention any of these issues.